Who says all the fun’s to be had in consumer PR? My time in the Corporate and Financial Team, as part of my graduate rotation, has seen me working on big name accounts like Starbucks, Aviva and Unilever and has spanned the serious to the downright surreal. One unexpected job over the last few weeks found me tracking down professional fencing gear for Stephen Kaufer, the CEO of TripAdvisor to wear in a photo shoot for The Sunday Times.
Despite some of the more unusual jobs I have taken on here, what has struck me is how this team is truly operating at the cutting edge of corporate PR and working alongside some of the biggest names in business. It has been a great learning experience and below is some of what I will take away with me.
In an age where Corporate Social Responsibility has become a byword for good practice in the business world, Edelman’s clients push the boundaries of what it really means to be socially responsible. Just look at Unilever which is fast becoming a poster child for good environmental practice – in the words of one journalist recently, it’s now “the kind of business you could take home to meet your mum”. Paul Polman’s speech at Davos focused not on profit or expansion, but on global food prices. Major commercial companies are starting to address world problems which have for decades been confined to the political sphere. The extent of Unilever’s influence via its far-reaching supply chain means that its sustainability practices can have a real global impact.
All this is exactly what Richard Edelman is getting at when he states that business can – and must – earn the “license to lead”. He made his comments this month at the most important event on the Edelman calendar – the launch of the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer. It was great to be working in Corporate for the launch because the data is arguably most immediately relevant to this group. The office was buzzing on the day of the launch of the Trust data and this buzz also hit the social media space and at one point was the number one trending topic on Twitter.
The headline finding of the barometer this year – that trust in government is at a catastrophic low with trust in business not far behind – is perhaps not surprising for those of us in the UK, who witnessed a summer of riots in London followed by the faltering efforts of the Coalition government and banks to reverse a truly frightening economic decline. The breakdown of results provides for an engrossing read. It’s interesting to note that while micro-blogging and social-networking sites did see a huge jump in trust in 2012, traditional media is still by far the most trusted source of information with trust in media as a whole actually significantly rising.
As I pass through the department on my grad rotation around the Edelman office, it seems to me that the at times painstaking task of getting coverage is made that bit easier by having clients who understand that they don’t just need to run a good business but also be a good business. Only by continuing to recognise that, can business hope to win back the Trust of the people.
